Social workers are to be issued with clearer guidance on their conduct after the first breakdown of disciplinary actions by the profession’s new regulator revealed a high number of cases involving allegations of inappropriate relationships with clients.

A computer company delivering the national identity card scheme was frantically hunting yesterday for a lost computer drive containing 5,000 personnel files, including the private details of prison officers.

The “hysterical rhetoric” of national politicians trying to satisfy the “public clamour for prison-based punitiveness” is criticised today by an inquiry chaired by Cherie Booth QC.

The interim report from the Commission on English Prisons Today says local prisons should be handed over to be run by local authorities as an alternative to the “government’s current titanic course” of building new 2,500-bed prisons which will contribute little to public safety.

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